Seven-Year High-School Programme To Start This Academic Year

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information is to begin the implementation of a seven-year high-school programme this academic year.

“This will mean two additional years of high school for students who complete grade 11 and want alternative opportunities alongside the traditional sixth-form Caribbean Advanced Proficiency (CAPE) curriculum,” Portfolio Minister, Hon. Fayval Williams, said during a back-to-school broadcast recently.

She noted that any student who completed grade 11 in the last academic year and is not enrolled for the traditional CAPE curriculum is entitled to be admitted to one of the new Sixth Form Pathway programmes to pursue a two-year course of study.

Mrs. Williams also informed that across primary schools, the Ministry will pivot to using more specialist subject teachers with an emphasis on Mathematics and English Language, which are the foundation subjects.

“In our near future, gone will be the days of one teacher in a primary-school classroom teaching all subjects. This is one of our flagship initiatives this school year and we expect it to significantly raise the level of Mathematics and English Language knowledge in our primary schools,” she said.

Turning to the early-childhood sector, Mrs. Williams said that assessing all children at age four in the areas of general development, behaviour and early learning in literacy and numeracy, will be done annually at all institutions.

“This will enable the practitioners in the early-childhood sector to make the necessary interventions, so that our students will have a higher level of readiness for primary schools,” the Education Minister said.

Source: Ministry of Education